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Kierkegaard’s Leap

hudsonreview.com

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Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#11

Post by mikelyons »

nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

> Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking

I would argue that questions of the afterlife can be answered in this kind of thinking, specifically practices like long term meditation, self-inquiry, use of entheogens, etc. which can cause direct experience of afterlife, and direct experience of the mechanism behind things like reincarnation.

(appeal to authority: my own direct experience)

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#12

Post by hacknat »

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are the two philosophers who, when I read them, make me realize what a hypocrite I am. My favorite Kierkegaard quote in this vain:

"One must do everything for oneself and for God."

We are all often "performing" in one way or another for others. What would your life look like if you were only performing for yourself and for "God". I don't think it's possible actually, it's more of a goal to strive for.

Nietzsche's:

"I live in my own house

I've never copied nobody even half

And at any master that lacks the grace

to laugh at himself - I laugh."

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#13

Post by sjackso »

wry_discontent wrote: post #10
nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

> in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? This is very reminiscent of Buddhist thinking. Did Kierkegaard write at all about Buddhism?

That quote is from the article, not Kierkegaard himself. There's a lenghy answer to your question here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierk...

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#14

Post by xamuel »

wry_discontent wrote: post #10
nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

> in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? This is very reminiscent of Buddhist thinking. Did Kierkegaard write at all about Buddhism?

There is a lot of commonality between some of the sayings of Christ and some of the sayings of Buddha. But the shared eastern elements are more obvious in Buddha, more subtle in Jesus.

For example, when Jesus says, "All who draw the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52), that's obviously and blatantly false, in the literal sense. But it makes perfect sense from a Buddhist non-dualistic perspective: when we kill our fellow man, we kill ourself, because we ARE (one with) our fellow man.

More to the parent's point about ego dissolution, the following words of Christ take on a totally different meaning if you view them through that lens: "In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh" (Matthew 24:44). The surface-level interpretation is that the hour of His coming will be unexpected. But the subtler esoteric meaning is that if we want to meet the Son of Man, we need to turn off our thinking!

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#15

Post by jfengel »

nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

I don't get the obsession with the fear of death. I'm just not afraid of it. That's not bravado. It just doesn't occur to me to be afraid of it.

I'm afraid of dying, because that's probably going to hurt. I'm afraid of other people dying, because it sucks to live without them. But the idea of my own not-existing-any-more just doesn't fill me with the dread or terror that the quotes you cite seem to take as axiomatic.

It feels like I'm being offered a cure for a disease that they're creating. While "fear of death" is certainly cross-cultural, it doesn't feel to me like it's an inherent part of the human condition. It feels as if Kirkegaard is offering a Christian solution to a Christian problem, and it offers nothing to somebody who hasn't already accepted the basic premises.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#16

Post by M0T0K0 »

jfengel wrote: post #15
nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

I don't get the obsession with the fear of death. I'm just not afraid of it. That's not bravado. It just doesn't occur to me to be afraid of it. I'm afraid of dying , because that's probably going to hurt. I'm afraid of other people dying, because it sucks to live without them. But the idea of my own not-existing-any-more just doesn't fill me with the dread or terror that the quotes you cite seem to take as axiomatic…

As an Athiest who has a few scrapes in the past few years with near-misses or almost dying, I tend to agree.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#17

Post by nickysielicki »

jfengel wrote: post #15
nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

I don't get the obsession with the fear of death. I'm just not afraid of it. That's not bravado. It just doesn't occur to me to be afraid of it. I'm afraid of dying , because that's probably going to hurt. I'm afraid of other people dying, because it sucks to live without them. But the idea of my own not-existing-any-more just doesn't fill me with the dread or terror that the quotes you cite seem to take as axiomatic…

He addresses this sort of question in the intro:

> So it is that Christianity has taught the Christian to think dauntlessly of everything earthly and worldly, including death. It is almost as though the Christian must be puffed up because of this proud elevation above everything men commonly call misfortune, above that which men commonly call the greatest evil. But then in turn Christianity has discovered an evil which man as such does not know of; this misery is the sickness unto death. What the natural man considers horrible -- when he has in this wise enumerated everything and knows nothing more he can mention, this for the Christian is like a jest. Such is the relation between the natural man and the Christian; it is like the relation between a child and a man: what the child shudders at, the man regards as nothing. The child does not know what the dreadful is; this the man knows, and he shudders at it. The child’s imperfection consists, first of all, in not knowing what the dreadful is; and then again, as an implication of this, in shuddering at that which is not dreadful. And so it is also with the natural man, he is ignorant of what the dreadful truly is, yet he is not thereby exempted from shuddering; no, he shudders at that which is not the dreadful: he does not know the true God, but this is not the whole of it, he worships an idol as God.

> Only the Christian knows what is meant by the sickness unto death. He acquires as a Christian a courage which the natural man does not know -- this courage he acquires by learning fear for the still more dreadful. Such is the way a man always acquires courage; when one fears a greater danger, it is as though the other did not exist. But the dreadful thing the Christian learned to know is "the sickness unto death."

It's not just about not fearing death, it's about not fearing death because you fear something much worse.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#18

Post by galaxyLogic »

cristoperb wrote: post #8
galaxyLogic wrote: post #4

"Kierkegaard’s most famous book, Fear and Trembling (1843)" Makes we wonder did that inspire Hunter S Thompson to name his book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"?

I don't know, but that particular phrase is old, from Psalm 55: "Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me" https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+55&versio...

Interesting to know. So I assume Thompson was in Vegas, and fear and loathing came upon him :-)

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#19

Post by Merrill »

dwd wrote: post #3

For anyone contemplating reading Kierkegaard for the first time I would highly recommend starting with his journals. Reading his daily thoughts, his love of walks, his relationship with Regine and his multitude of feuds with the newspapers and the state church gives a great perspective on his published work. It's also where you will find most of his quotable statements. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it…

I read some of Kierkegaard's works some decades ago. It seemed to me that by his time philosophers had generally concluded that Christian theology, and theology generally, was not worth serious study. And Kierkegaard couldn't accept that he no longer believed it either - Sort of the first of the school of those who argue that God must exist because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#20

Post by dwd »

Merrill wrote: post #19
dwd wrote: post #3

For anyone contemplating reading Kierkegaard for the first time I would highly recommend starting with his journals. Reading his daily thoughts, his love of walks, his relationship with Regine and his multitude of feuds with the newspapers and the state church gives a great perspective on his published work. It's also where you will find most of his quotable statements. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it…

I read some of Kierkegaard's works some decades ago. It seemed to me that by his time philosophers had generally concluded that Christian theology, and theology generally, was not worth serious study. And Kierkegaard couldn't accept that he no longer believed it either - Sort of the first of the school of those who argue that God must exist because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Yes, he tried and push theology to a perfect interpretation, but never took the next step of abandoning it in the way Nietzsche did. "God is dead...and we killed him" to paraphrase the madman.

While Nietzsche lived later and embraced the nihilism that Kierkegaard couldn't bring himself to acknowledge, he rejected any notion of Darwinian influence in his writing.

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